MSRP

A daily price guessing game. Five real eBay auction items are shown each day with their title, image, and bid count. Players choose from four price options per item and score 0-100 based on how close their guess is to the actual sold price, for a maximum daily total of 500.

Stack

Layer	Tech
Frontend	React + TypeScript + Vite, Tailwind CSS (custom msrp-* color tokens)
Backend	Spring Boot 3.3.5 (Kotlin), MariaDB, Jsoup (eBay scraping)
Build	Gradle (Kotlin DSL) for backend, npm/Vite for frontend

The frontend proxies /api to the backend in dev. In production the backend serves on port 777; the frontend is a separate static build.

REST API (/api/v1)

Method	Path	Notes
GET	/today?date=YYYY-MM-DD	Returns today's (or specified date's) 5 items with price choices
POST	/verify	Body: { itemId, guess } -- returns score and actual price
GET	/available-dates	List of past dates with games, for the replay picker
POST	/analytics	Body: { eventType } -- records UNIQUE_VISITORS, GAMES_PLAYED, REPLAY_PLAYED
POST	/score	Body: { score, date } -- submits final score to global leaderboard
GET	/game-stats?date=YYYY-MM-DD	Returns high/low/avg score for a game date
POST	/contact	Body: { name, email, subject, message } -- sends email
POST	/admin/curate	Auth-gated; triggers eBay item curation for a date
GET	/admin/analytics?days=30	Auth-gated; returns event + game stats summary

Game mechanics

• 5 eBay sold auction listings per day, curated automatically each night at 9 PM
• Each round shows the item title, image, bid count, and 4 price choices (one correct, three decoys)
• Score per item: 100 points for exact match, scaling down based on percentage off
• Maximum total score per day: 500
• Decoy prices are generated as 25%, 50%, and 250% of the actual price, rounded to natural increments
• Past Game mode replays any prior date without affecting streaks or analytics

Score calculation

Scoring is percentage-based relative to the actual price. A guess within a small margin earns close to 100; a guess far off earns close to 0. The formula is applied per item.

Item curation

• Runs nightly at 9 PM via @Scheduled in EbayCuratorScheduler
• Curates items for the next 1-2 days
• Scrapes eBay sold auction listings by category using Jsoup
• Filters for items with images, valid prices, and reasonable bid counts
• Stores items in the daily_item table keyed by game_date

Admin auth

The /admin/* endpoints require an X-Admin-Key header matching msrp.admin.api-key in application.properties. The check uses constant-time comparison to prevent timing attacks.

Dev setup

# Backend
cd backend && ./gradlew bootRun

# Frontend
cd frontend && npm install && npm run dev

Frontend dev server proxies /api to localhost:777.

Config notes (application.properties)

• spring.mail.password must be a Gmail App Password (not the account password). Generate at myaccount.google.com -- Security -- App passwords.
• msrp.admin.api-key gates the /admin/* endpoints.
• cors.allowed.origins is a comma-separated list of allowed frontend origins.